Boat pilots often struggle with docking their watercraft, such as a boat, small ship or yacht. A boat can be damaged if its hull impacts a fixed support, such as a wooden pile and/or the metal or wooden portion of a dock. In docking a boat, a pilot can be forced to maneuver the boat into a narrow space between fixed supports while the boat is being rocked by waves and/or currents, or with low visibility due to adverse weather conditions or blind spots.
Boat fenders have been employed in circumstances such as these to aid a boat pilot in maneuvering the boat into position without doing damage to either the dock or the boat hull. Boat fenders are made in a variety of shapes and sizes, but are generally elongated along an axis from which a rope is attached, thereby allowing the fender to be lowered into position and suspended between the boat hull and the adjacent dock. Boat fenders are also manufactured from a variety of materials, including plastics and rubber, and are generally designed to float in case the rope or line suspending the fender breaks. When properly placed, a boat fender cushions impacts between the hull and the dock or piling, preventing damage to both.
Unfortunately, boat fenders can be awkward and difficult to accurately and conveniently position and fix in place once positioned. Pilots and ship crews have tried a variety of techniques for orienting and fixing boat fenders into position, particularly when the boat is moving toward a dock, but these prior techniques are not entirely satisfactory.
One technique for positioning boat fenders involves letting a rope, which is attached at one end to the fender, down over the side of a ship railing until the fender is in the desired position between the boat hull and the dock. Once positioned, the rope at the end opposite the fender is simply knotted and secured around a portion of the railing extending along the periphery of the boat's topside deck. This fender positioning technique has the advantage of involving no special equipment, and for that reason is probably the most common technique for securely suspending a fender from the boat railing.
The foregoing technique has significant disadvantages, however. First, the foregoing technique requires the pilot or crewmember to have the knowledge and ability to tie a sturdy knot. Some crewmembers may not know how to tie such a knot. Other crewmembers may have physical limitations, such as muscle weakness or arthritis, which inhibit the tying of sturdy knots. Second, and perhaps more importantly, even a sturdy knot will not prevent the rope from sliding laterally along a railing. Generally, the coefficients of friction are too low to prevent a knotted rope from being pulled along the railing when a boat hull pinches the boat fender against a dock. As a result, boat fenders can move laterally away from their correct position. This can lead to damage to the boat if the fender is not present to absorb at least some of the impact of the boat against the dock.
A second technique for positioning boat fenders is slightly more complicated than the first technique, and involves a device, usually made of plastic, that is designed to attach to the boat railing. Embodiments of such a device are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,094,783 and 6,152,060, for a “Rope Clamp” and “Hooker Cleat”, respectively. In this second technique, a rope attached at one end to the boat fender is threaded at its other end through the device, which is in turn mounted to the railing.
This second technique has advantages over the first technique in avoiding the inconvenience of having to tie a sturdy knot to secure the rope to the boat railing. But the second technique has the disadvantage of requiring the use of a special device to secure the rope to the boat railing and, perhaps more importantly, the second technique has the same principal disadvantage of the first technique, namely, the rope-securing device is not laterally fixed to the boat railing, and can therefore slide horizontally back and forth when the boat fender is pinched between the boat hull and the dock.
In a third technique involving another rope-securing device, a rope attached to a cleat is threaded through a device designed to attach to a stanchion. Stanchions are the vertical supports that hold up the railing(s) above and around the periphery of the boat's deck. An embodiment of a rope-securing device that is employable in connection with the third technique is described in Munich U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,133. This third technique has the advantage of laterally fixing the position of the boat fender. But the third technique has the disadvantage of allowing the boat fender to be positioned only in certain lateral positions, namely, the positions of the stanchions. Some boats have stanchions spaced closely around the deck, but others have fewer, and it can be difficult or impossible to properly position fenders on such boats. Moreover, devices employable in accordance with the third technique tend to slide vertically or detach after extended use, thereby defeating their intended function to fix the position of a boat fender.